The budget continues a journey you began with me three years ago – to get New Jersey’s house in order; to turn Trenton upside down; to make hard but better choices so that we could put our state back on a path to growth.

For the fourth year in a row, the budget maintains the fiscal discipline we need to restore New Jersey. Fiscal sanity has indeed returned to Trenton.

For the fourth year in a row, this budget is balanced and imposes no tax increases on the people of New Jersey. I want every New Jersey citizen to remember just how different things were before we arrived. 115 tax and fee increases in eight years. Skyrocketing spending. $13 billion in deficits left on our doorstep by the irresponsibility of the past.

We must never take for granted what we have already achieved. Reduced spending. New jobs. Balanced budgets four years in a row. And lower taxes. It is truly a new day for New Jersey.

For the fourth year in a row, the budget funds the key initiatives necessary to rebuild our state and restore our prospects for future growth and greatness.

It provides a record amount of funding for our schools.

It once again fully funds the pension contribution we agreed to in the landmark pension reform we enacted together in 2011. In fact, no previous governor has contributed what we have contributed to our pension fund.

This budget also triples our job creating business tax cuts and incentives for growth that we put in place two years ago.

It also provides for those most in need: our lowest-income families, those with chronic illnesses, and people with developmental disabilities.

In total, the budget I am submitting to you today provides $32.9 billion in state spending. While we are meeting the needs of our people in this budget, we are doing it by spending less than the state spent in Fiscal Year 2008. Let me repeat that for you. Six years later, a budget that still spends less. Where else is this happening in America? This is what happens when you have a government that tells people the truth, that makes the hard choices and actually manages our government.

When we looked around four years ago, we saw New Jersey in dire straits. Remember?

Jobs and families were leaving the state. Property taxes had increased 70% in the previous ten years. The state had increased taxes and fees 115 times in the prior eight years. The budget was in deficit even though the state had increased its debt nearly tenfold in the prior two decades.

We knew what we had to do. The results of the old path of higher taxes and higher spending were all around us -- and they were disastrous. As the late, great General Norman Schwarzkopf once said, “The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.”

Those who were supposed to be responsible for controlling taxes and spending before we came to office fundamentally deceived the people of our state. They said yes to everything – yes to higher taxes. Yes to more spending. We must not return to that era of recklessness and deceit.

Starting three years ago, the people of New Jersey rolled up their sleeves and we did it, we did it together.

We knew we needed to get state government spending under control. Together, we recovered from an era of taxes and deficits; restored balance to our finances; and rebuilt those things that will contribute to economic health in the future.

First, we immediately impounded $2.1 billion in reckless spending by the previous administration and its legislative budget leaders and balanced the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget with no new taxes.